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This dough was pretty hard to work with and the crumb and oven spring wasn't as exciting as my other loaves, but I think it is my new favorite bread. The flours I used are white bread flour and 20% wholewheat. I'll probably add more wholewheat or grain to this dough next time. Since a 50% wholewheat dough at 88% hydration would be much easier to work with than a 20% wholewheat at 88% hydration.

Here are the process pictures:

Almost everything in my garden plot died over the winter. The one exception is the sage. So I wanted to bake something that used sage, and recalled seeing Lazy Loafer's Sage & Onion Levain.

I used 50% bread flour and 50% AP flour because that is what I had handy.  It is extremely tasty.

This is a repeat of one of the multigrain breads from last week. I changed the method a bit but the recipe, aside from the water amounts, is the same. For some reason, the bread this week needed quite a bit more water than last week. I guess this reinforces the adage to be conservative in the hydration and adjust as needed.

 thought I would share this nice little loaf that I made for a friend the other day its 50% wholemeal with home brew stout, a  yeasted loaf. Unfortunately no inside shot as it was given away and well received  by a friend that was showing us his commercial smoking equipment that can also bake a loaf of bread  but not at the same time of course . 

I

Kind regards Derek

i would like to find a recipe for these. When Balducci's was on 6th Ave in NYC, they sold a biscotti that was a " break your teeth " hard black pepper biscotti and had a different finish than regular biscotti. Looked almost like they had a water bath at some point in the cooking. But not a ring, biscuit or wreath shape. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Lucy came up with a lite whole grain sourdough bread this week.  Each of the 8 grains were only 10 grams and nine were sprouted so this is really getting close to a the same type of SFSD style bread that David Snyder is so famous for around TFL.

Hi! Today is my birthday and I usually cook even simple meals to celebrate occasions like this but my mom underwent a D&C just a few days ago and was advised to rest for a fortnight to a month so I am the one who is manning the household now; I am doing all of my mom's chores in addition to my own so no time to bake or cook or even check your posts here this time. We just bought some stuff that I like from our favorite restaurant and stall.

I made these last week  to eat with burgers and sandwiches.  It's an updated version of a formula I made a while ago.

I changed the original formula by swapping out the rye flour with freshly ground spelt, used First Clear instead of Bread Flour and upped the water content.  I also switched the olive oil with honey.

Right before baking I grated some fresh cheddar cheese on-top to give it an extra flavor kick.

The end result was a flavorful roll perfect for burgers or just about anything.

The Zen part of baking is the fact that you can't alter every part of an artisan loaf—although you can get close. Eventually the rise and opening of the loafs seam will go its own way and run off in the direction it sees fit. A baker can only control so much before the bake, but once the yeast begin to heat up and ebullition of CO2 is accelerated we can only relax and be happy with what they decided to do. After hundreds of bakes we finally learn to let the loaf decide what artisanal and craft really mean. Defining it ourselves is like telling someone how to interpret Vincent Gogh.

My most recent bread comeuppance has been thanks to Msr. Calvel.  Someone recently posted a page from his book which had illustrations of differing bread forms and an accompanying table listing the features of each.  Well, it turns out that my "baguettes" are not even baguettes according to the man.  They match his characteristics of a "long batard": size, weight, shape and number of scores.  Waddya know?  Well, I'll still cheat a bit and continue to call them baguettes because I haven't noticed any bread police nearby to pinch me on this.